Blogs

February 21, 2012

Creating web application from existing content database

There are situations where you want to propagate one SharePoint web application
to some other farm/machine. I feel the fastest way is to take content database backup
and restore it in your destination farm. I have done so in last couple of weeks
and I have leaned how to quickly do that.
Here are quick notes from my experience:

Pre-requisites:
I was provided with content database backup and source code. That makes be able
to restore site and generate wsps from source code.Creating content database from backup:

Go to your database server and do following:

Create a blank database that will be used as content database Restore a database

using content database back up from source farm.

Creating a web application:

Go to sharepoint central administration and create a new web application

While creating a new web application, use existing content database in database
section

Sometimes if your database is too large, web application creation takes too long
and times out. Don't worry at all. web application is still created successfully.
It happened to me 4 times out of 5.